Testing on different platforms

Today I released Text::BibTeX 0.40_3. I hope it to be the final release (that is, 0.40 will get out with the same code). But I just tested it with Strawberry Perl, Linux (Arch Linux) and Mac OS X (intel, Leopard).

We can't test on all available architectures, and that's why CPAN Testers exist. Long live to them. But sometimes it would be cool if we could use a machine and do some experiments before releasing. Waiting for the module to be picked and tested is not an efficient method.

It would be cool to create a set of queues (one per architecture/operating system) where CPAN authors could submit a module to be tested. The module would be installed, tested, and a report generated. It would be nice to check the current waiting list on each queue, so we can have an idea of how things will evolve.

I know there are some frameworks that were thought (PITA, if I am not wrong). But I never saw anything similar working. Probably this could be a interesting proposal for TPF Grants. No need for anything fancy. It just needs to work :P

For the moment, I am wondering if I should install BSD on a virtual machine so I have the possibility to test my modules. But this leads to administration problems. I am a newbie (to say the best) on BSD, and it would take some time before I could use the VM efficiently for testing purposes...